Show of Support for Sore Backs : Trends: The weightlifter’s best friend has busted out of the gym and into the workplace. Teachers and store clerks alike are wearing the belts in hopes of preventing on-the-job injuries.

A year ago, you hardly ever saw them outside the free-weight section of your local gym. Now they’re everywhere--on bus drivers, garbage collectors, plumbers, hardware-store clerks, janitors, day-care workers, nursing-home employees, even homemakers.

They’re back-support belts--those suspendered, Velcro-and-elastic midriff girdles that provide intra-abdominal compression and keep the thoracic and lumbar curves in alignment. Inspired by the original leather weightlifter belts, they’re the biggest fashion trend to hit the non-white-collar workplace since steel-toed shoes and baggy work pants.

“We’re selling ‘em by the truckload,” says Jack Peveler, a hardware salesman at Home Depot in Torrance. “We’ve sold thousands of ‘em at just this store alone. For a while there, we couldn’t get enough of them in stock. Contractors, landscapers, housewives--anybody who has to lift anything is buying them.”

“We’re using two shifts a day just to make the belts,” says Mark Dorn, vice president of sales for McGuire-Nicholas Co. in Commerce, a tool-belt company that two years ago jumped into the burgeoning back-support belt business. “Right now we’re making 4,000 belts a day.”

“It’s now like part of the uniform,” says Jerry Cook, corporate safety director for Federal Express, which last month made wearing back-support belts mandatory for about 50,000 of its employees--the lifting half of the company’s 96,000-person work force.

According to industry estimates, about 5 million back-support belts will be sold nationally this year at a retail price of about $15 to $30. About 50 companies nationwide manufacture or distribute the belts under various trade names.

Why the sudden boom?

The answer is simple. Forget carpal-tunnel syndrome, VDT eyestrain or any of the other ‘90s-style workplace afflictions du jour. According to the National Safety Council, by far the No. 1 cause of lost time on the job, and insurance and workers’ compensation claims, is that old reliable--back injuries. There were almost a million disabling, work-related back injuries in the United States last year, with an estimated cost to employers of at least $20 billion.

Desperate to reduce those losses, employers from day-care centers to grocery stores to Federal Express are requiring their employees to not only wear company-provided belts but also to undergo “lifting training” to cut down on lower back strain.

“We were concerned about our employees,” says Melanie Fidler, administrator at Children’s World Learning Center in Westlake Village. “Especially in the toddler room, our teachers very often have to lift children, and the back supports are very helpful for that. They’ve been available to our teachers for some time, but wearing them has been mandatory since August. We do training and provide the belts for them.”

“They’re trying to do anything they can to reduce on-the-job injuries,” says John Walker, an employee at Lumber City in Tujunga, who, like 90% of his co-workers, wears a company-supplied support belt at work. (“When I’m on the clock, the belt is on me,” he says.) “The way they look at it, anything is better than (workers’) comp.”

The pioneer in the back-support belt business is generally acknowledged to be a St. Paul, Minn.-based company called Ergodyne Corp. Formed in 1983 by Thomas Votel, an occupational-health physician, and some of his golfing buddies, the company developed and marketed a preventive back support for nurses. Later the firm began marketing the back supports through insurance companies, and then to large companies trying to reduce injury costs.

The breakthrough to retail consumer sales--that is, to small companies and to individuals for around-the-home use--came three years ago, after Ergodyne sold belts to the Home Depot home-improvement chain for employees.

“Customers would see (Home Depot employees) wearing them and offer to buy them right off their backs for a hundred dollars,” says Paula Newman, Ergodyne vice president for marketing. “Pretty soon we had retailers calling us from all over wanting to know how they could get them. That was really the beginning of the boom in consumer interest.”

Originally, most back-support belts were black or dark blue. But with fashion being a camp follower to utility, it wasn’t long before companies started introducing colorful touches to their belts.

Ergodyne, for example, markets versions of its basic ProFlex belt in basic blue, painter’s white, lawn & garden green, high-visibility orange and even denim. (It also makes heavier, more rigid belts for heavy industrial use and for weightlifters.)

“We’re just now in the process of introducing fashion,” Newman says. “It’s a big strategic initiative for us.”

“Fashion is starting to become important,” says Susan Minaya of FLA Orthopedics, a Miami Lakes, Fla.-based company that is one of the nation’s largest back-support-belt suppliers. “People are looking for something stylish.”

But although back-support belts may be stylish, do they really work?

Everyone seems to agree that the belts alone won’t prevent lower-back injuries, that training in proper lifting is essential. The training is relatively simple, the same things you’ve heard for years: Keep your back straight, let your legs do the work, keep the load close to your body--and, perhaps most important, ask yourself, should I really lift this thing or should I get help?

The belts do provide support, but they also provide a psychological benefit. In most designs, the belt is worn snugly around the waist when you’re not lifting. When you are about to lift, you pull tabs at each side to cinch the belt tight. The very act of cinching, manufacturers say, makes you think about the lift you’re about to make and thus increases the chance you’ll do it correctly.

It’s probably too early in the back-support-belt boom to say for sure if their use will significantly reduce workplace injuries. Cook, of Federal Express, says spot tests of the belts among its work force lead him to believe that “there will be a tremendous benefit” to the company in reducing back injuries. But, he says, no hard figures are available. David Bryant, West Coast safety manager for Home Depot, says his company has had a reduction in employee back injuries since the belts were introduced, but again, no figures are available.

There also have been some concerns among the medical community that constant wearing of a back-support belt could cause stomach muscles to atrophy, perhaps causing problems when the belt isn’t worn. A 1990 study published in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, however, did not find any reduction in muscle strength with the belt. The same study, meanwhile, found that back braces and lifting training did not reduce the number of back injuries among a test group of warehouse workers, but may have reduced their severity and resulting work-time loss.

Nevertheless, most people who put on a belt say it makes them feel better.

“My associate always wears one and he doesn’t even have a back problem,” said Mike Moumne, 37, a Lomita electrical contractor, as he tried on a belt at Home Depot. “I always used to make fun of him. But I have a back problem and my wife wanted me to try one.”

Moumne slipped on the belt, hooked the Velcro tabs and cinched the side tabs up tight.

“Hey,” he said. “That feels great!”